The Royal Academy of Arts and its anatomical teachings : with an examination of art-anatomy practices during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain.

Darlington, Anne Carol.The Royal Academy of Arts and its anatomical teachings : with an examination of art-anatomy practices during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain.
PhD thesis, Institute of Education, University of London.

Abstract

The thesis investigates the artistic and anatomical
practices taking place between circa 1768 and 1810, primarily
in the context of the Royal Academy of Arts. In focusing on
the educational components of anatomical knowledge, the
dissertation examines the style, methodology and the various
types of private and public teaching available to artists and
medical students during this period.
In Chapter One, I examine the social, professional and
demographic factors uniting artists and medical men. The
social and professional divide that at one time kept such
professions apart, was now being filled by informal gatherings.
Neither artists nor anatomists however, were solely reliant on
venues like the Royal Academy of Arts and private anatomy
theatres. Such meetings often began in and around London's
social milieu: the coffee-house culture.
In Chapter Two, I go on to look at the curriculum used in
the Royal Academy Schools. An artist pursuing studies in the
human figure would attend life classes, anatomy lectures,
dissections, and teachings on physiognomy. The Academy Schools
were not immune to the medical and scientific influences of the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; the theories and
practices of medical men infiltrated artistic training.
Consequently, a number of private anatomy schools in the
metropolis were open to both medical and art students. Other
private drawing and dissecting classes had their own anatomical
museums attached, providing art students with the opportunity
of painting from pathological specimens.
In Chapters Three and Four, I proceed to explore the part
played by William Hunter, an obstetrician, anatomist and the
first professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Hunter and Joshua Reynolds were in agreement concerning
anatomical instruction for artists. It was an education
consisting of a thorough knowledge of the human body, and the
ability to translate such anatomical information on to a
canvas. Discussed here also is Hunter's large obstetrical
atlas, and the life-size painted panels of Gautier D'Agoty.
I then proceed in Chapter Five, to examine the Plaister
Academy. I examine its students, the curriculum and its
teachers. While at the Royal Academy, William Hunter had
access to the Plaister Academy and, as I suggest, it is here
that he made his three-dimensional plaster of paris models of
female anatomies.
As a whole, it is the aim of this dissertation to have
thoroughly explored the links between artists and anatomists in
England between 1768 and 1810, and to have documented the rise
and nature of art education in this period.